Esref Armagan is a blind painter. Native of Istanbul, Turkey, he has been blind since birth. Researchers have studied him to understand him. Brain scans showed that parts of his visual cortex light up as if he was seeing. His physical sight is not operating. What does this mean?

My thoughts are:

– the lighting up of certain parts of the brain do not directly mean anything about the entire rest of the body. Stereotyped brains are a make believe brain and has not connection to any one person’s brain in particular. It can only provide a guide for some people if there are a number of similar significant factors. However, any scientist knows that one minor difference can create an entire new set of particulars.

– the brain is not 1 dimensional, one way driven, linear process of operation based in physicality which is normally assumed when examining the brain.

– this dynamic of a creative brain suggests that there are operations in the human that are not understood in complexity.

– it appears that the lighting of certain parts of the brain in brain scans are not as simple as reading of brain scans has been done.

– a part of the brain designated for certain functions doesn’t really exist except in extremely shortsighted ideas. The brain is multifunctional at any sight.

– The deeper processes of human behavior, such as a blind man painting or in general, the creative self, has not even been touched upon in the common understandings of science we are told about, let alone understood.

– examining the brain fragmented from environment and from the body is like trying to figure out how a car is being driven by looking at the steering wheel but ignoring the car and the driver. While it might be exciting to make discoveries about how the steering wheel functions that might not be known, it’s woefully insufficient to getting the entire understanding. It is this dominant way of seeing the world that has caused so much misinformation and malinformation that has led to our significant environmental problems – with ourselves, with each other and the planet.

– what’s really interesting is people who actually have their physical eye operation functioning well but somewhere in the brain they are not SEEING what is in front of them as they have some interference that filters what they see or causes them to defocus – it’s often called a BELIEF system. (ha ha!)

– seeing things in parts causes us to miss the totality of something 0r the meaning of the whole. In fact, if you haven’t seen the whole thing first, seeing parts first would only serve to confuse. For example, imagine if you see a car as parts but never shown the whole car and it’s function. That’s kind of what brain research does. They come at it backwards. Now once you know the whole of it and the purpose, you can understand where the parts go. I believe a wholistic approach solves the inherent problems. Thus you can see a car or you can see the parts of a car. Sometimes you don’t have to see all the parts or use them, but depending on what you intend to do, you better have the right parts to do it!

There is much more on creative brains to discuss that may just disrupt the stereotypical ideas about brains…..